WALES rugby captain Gareth Thomas today gives his inside story for the first time on the circumstances which led to the controversial departure of Mike Ruddock as coach.

WALES rugby captain Gareth Thomas today gives his inside story for the first time on the circumstances which led to the controversial departure of Mike Ruddock as coach.

In his new book Alfie, which is being exclusively serialised in the Western Mail, Thomas gives a blow by blow account of what happened behind the scenes, culminating in Ruddock’s exit.

Today’s extracts reveal the dressing room detail of the biggest Welsh sporting controversy for years, which became infamously known as Ruddockgate.

Thomas bristles at suggestions of player-power forcing out Ruddock. But he does claim the coach lacked authority. Alfie also claims that when Ruddock took over in the summer of 2004, “the team was more or less running itself”.

He writes, “It was credit to Mike that he did not come in and introduce change for change’s sake, but it was almost as if there was very little for him to do anyway.”

Thomas outlines the bad habits he says players had been permitted to slip into on and off the pitch.

“And, yes, the role of Mike was, in my opinion, becoming a problem that would eventually need to be addressed if nothing changed,” he writes.

Thomas admits he raised the issue with Ruddock himself and with the WRU’s then chief executive Steve Lewis. Thomas says he wanted Ruddock to lead Wales to new heights, but admits, “The whole way we were functioning was, to be blunt, confusing.”

He reveals how the Welsh players were ready to ignore an order from Ruddock, who had asked them not to attend a night out in central London after defeat to England in 2006. “Discipline was crumbling because it had been permitted to crumble,” he writes. “If Steve Hansen had made the call that we weren’t to go out, it would have been accepted without a single murmur.

“Mike’s authority was being challenged, leaving me to wonder whether he had properly exerted it in the first place.”

HOW TO BUY THE BOOK Western Mail readers can buy Alfie (RRP £17.99) for the special price of £14.99, including free p&p. To order please call 01206 255 800 and quote the reference 'WM'

WHEN the Wales squad met up for the 2005 autumn internationals, I was already concerned that we were slipping into bad habits.

And, yes, the role of head coach Mike Ruddock was, in my opinion, becoming a problem that would eventually need to be addressed if nothing changed.

The secret of our success in winning the Grand Slam was in the attention we paid to the little things in and around the squad – the way we conducted ourselves from the moment we met up in camp to the time we left the changing room in the Millennium Stadium after the match.

On the training field, for example, if we were doing a drill that required us to attack the middle of the pitch, the point of the attack had to be in line with, say, the right-hand post, not between the two posts.

It was the type of thing that Steve Hansen used to hammer us for getting wrong, calling a halt to the session and demanding we start again until we got it right.

It used to drive us nuts, but we came to realise the importance of precision in these situations.

Suddenly, though, we were just carrying on with the drill, not worried that our angles might have been slightly out, and it seemed that there was nobody prepared to call us to book over it, no figure of outright authority who would be on us like a ton of bricks if we were sloppy in anything we did.

Other outwardly trivial things were also slipping. For example, when we were running in a line to warm up before training, we were too often fragmented, instead of being perfectly together and looking like a team that meant business.

There were rumours that some of the lads had skived off weights sessions. It was so unlike anything that we stood for.

However, it was off the field that the general slackening was arguably most evident. As an international team, we were lucky that almost everything we needed was provided for us, making things that little bit more comfortable.

One example was bottled water. There was gallons of the stuff at every training session, and the moment you had any type of thirst coming on, you were welcome to go and take a bottle.

Since we had truly become a team under Steve Hansen, it was an unwritten rule that if you opened a bottle of water and took a few swigs, you didn’t then just discard it half-full and go and open another one an hour or so after.

Doing so was regarded as taking the mickey and a totally unnecessary waste that showed a disregard for the things that were given to us as a team.

But it was starting to happen, and, worse still, the half-empty bottles were being left around the place for someone else to clear up.

Not only that, but the changing room was also being left in a mess with lads thinking that it was OK to scrape the mud off the base of their boots and just leave it on the floor.

It was likewise for dressings and bandages, which were just being cut off and dumped for somebody else to clear up.

After one of the 2005 autumn internationals, I was the last one out of the home changing room, and when I looked back over my shoulder I saw that the place was a disgrace – it looked like a bomb had hit it.

In the past, we had always considered cleaning up after ourselves to be part of our team ethic. It was a little standard that made us what we were, and it was disappearing.

As unimportant as it might seem to outsiders, what I was seeing was the gradual disappearance of the little things that had made us a great squad.

We were each slipping into bad habits without realising it. The showers were constantly left in a mess, and the gym we used at the Vale of Glamorgan was being left in a mess.

It also emerged that on the morning after the match some of the players ordered Cokes from the bar at the hotel and then left without settling their bill. Hardly a hanging offence, I know – the bill would always have been taken care of – but it was yet another unnecessary pain for whoever was left to deal with it.

The biggest concern for me was that I was convinced that these lazy little habits were affecting what we were doing on the pitch.

A few of the senior players and I called a meeting during the autumn campaign and spelled out what was happening and how it had to be addressed.

For a time, things improved. However, the upturn was only temporary. The bad habits gradually came back, which was inevitable without a figure of genuine authority to stamp them out.

I didn’t really address this issue with Mike because I did not want to go to him and put on the line the importance of a type of behaviour that had been hammered into us by his predecessor.

In terms of the actual playing side of things, I also had major concerns about where we were heading on the pitch and the amount of work that needed to be done to keep us among the leading teams in the world.

The bottom line was that, while the players and management team seemed to be reasonably happy with what we had going, other teams had clearly worked us out.

The Grand Slam was a distant memory, and we needed someone to grab hold of us and take us to the next level, to take us somewhere none of us had been before.

In my mind, Mike was the one and only person to do that. I wanted him to say to us, ‘We have reached this level. Come with me to an even higher place.’

And the change in direction, the new ideas, the move to the next echelon, had to be presided over by him.

As head coach, it had to be his master plan. For me, the time had come for Mike to truly take up the reins and lead us to even greater conquests and eventually to a position from which we could go to the 2007 World Cup as contenders to win it.

Things had been easy up to that point, and we had been on a roll. We had been through the donkey work of the Steve Hansen era when so many of the foundations for what we were doing had been put down.

Then the victory against England in the 2005 Six Nations opener had given us the momentum we needed to crack on and take the Slam.

But the fact was that when Mike took charge in the summer of 2004, the team was more or less running itself.

It was credit to him that he did not come in and introduce change for change’s sake, but it was almost as if there was very little for him to do anyway.

After the win against England, we were in one of those zones in which we were playing some great rugby, but we were also having many things go our way.

The Grand Slam had been a whirlwind of success, during which we had barely any time to think about the incredible journey we were on.

But that journey had ended. Questions were starting to be asked of the Grand Slam champions for the first time, and it was clear to me that we needed to find a new path.

I decided to speak to Mike face-to-face and put my concerns – and some of those that had been passed to me by other players – right on the line.

It was the night before the final game of the autumn against Australia, and I went to Mike’s room at our Vale of Glamorgan Hotel base and knocked on his door.

"Look, Mike, we’ve taken Welsh rugby to a level nobody thought we could," I said to him. "As we have got here, the players and I want to be taken a step further. And we want you to take us there."

It led to a frank discussion between the two of us in which we each put points across. I won’t go into too many details, but Mike said that he thought I didn’t come to him often enough over a whole range of matters, preferring instead to go through his assistant Scott Johnson.

He said I should have been going to see him far more regularly as his captain. I conceded that he had a fair point and explained that it was only because, as a back, I worked more closely with Johnno on the training ground and, as such, he seemed the more natural port of call.

But I made it clear to Mike that the team could not remain as it was. It had become a ship that for the first time really needed somebody to guide it.

It had been floating merrily for a while, with everyone taking it in turns to paddle.

But it needed the captain of the ship – definitely Mike – to take it to another level, somewhere we had never been before.

Nobody can question the loyalty I had to Mike. Anything he wanted to do, any path he chose to take us on in his quest for improvement, I would have gone with him.

Mike assured me that he agreed with my call for him to really stamp his mark on the team and that he did want to lead us to that new territory.

I left his room that evening hugely encouraged that we had aired a lot of things and that from then on there would be real change.

As soon as we met up for the Six Nations, though, I started to get that sinking feeling you get when you expect change and it doesn’t arrive.

For a start, I thought we were under-prepared again. The little things were not there in training.

The problem was that it was difficult to see the general strategy and focus on the little things that had to be right as well.

The whole way we were functioning was, to be blunt, confusing. However, despite this, we were still confident going in against England on February 4.

I had wanted us to forget about everything that had gone before and to tear into this Six Nations playing a brand of rugby that maximised our strengths but also contained things that nobody expected.

And following my clear-the-air session with Mike just before the Australia game, I was really optimistic that would happen.

Yet nothing like that materialised. Our problem was that we only played good rugby in short spells – and I put that down to the fact that the little things on and off the training field that had come together to make us Grand Slam champions had eroded away.

We had been a team capable of playing great rugby for 80 minutes; suddenly we were slipping backwards and becoming a team that could only produce the goods in fits and starts.

There had been no real change of direction. We were still standing still. Furthermore, what happened after the game put an extra dampener on the whole weekend.

There was a lot of talk among the players about going into central London that Saturday night to attend an evening that the England scrum-half Matt Dawson – a really popular guy, particularly with the Lions players in our ranks – was arranging.

A lot of the lads were really keen to go, me included, but I remembered what Andrew Hore had said to me the year before after we had beaten England in the first game, about how we had another game in a week’s time and that to go out on the pop in a big way was not the right thing to do.

Here we were, having just been defeated heavily by England, planning a fairly major night out with Scotland coming to Cardiff in eight days’ time.

I went to our team manager Alan Phillips and told him that a posse of our players, me included, were planning on heading into central London, but that even though I was intending to go, I did not think it was a particularly good idea.

He agreed and said that we had to sort it out. Alan went off to speak to Mike about it and came back with the message that the head coach had agreed that it was not the right thing to do.

"Right," I said, "this needs to be done correctly. The players are annoyed enough as it is, and unless this is dealt with properly there is a danger that they will go behind your back and just scatter across town."

I told Alan that Mike had to get everybody into the team room and put it on the line that on no account was anyone to go into central London or have a heavy night out and that he should warn them what the consequences would be if they did.

As far as I was concerned, the message had to be conveyed in the strongest terms, and it had to come from Mike and nobody else.

A little while after, Mike came to me and said that he did not want to round the lads up in the team room like school youngsters and would rather give them the message from the front of the bus.

I nodded, but knew straight away that it would not carry as much weight delivered from the front of the bus because these situations are about creating the proper environment and making a point of calling a meeting.

I thought that Mike should have faced the team in a more formal and deliberate setting. The guys would then have been in no doubt that the message was not to be ignored. I knew that on the bus there would be a few of the lads at the back muttering behind seats that they were going to do as they pleased.

Just before Mike spoke, I told him to use this chance to stamp his authority on the team and do exactly what we had spoken about that night before the Australia game the previous autumn.

But he took the microphone and simply said that he didn’t think it was a good idea to go to central London, that people were welcome to have a drink at the hotel or locally, but that going to the centre of town and coming back at various hours of the morning was to be avoided.

I wasn’t best pleased, because I thought that the message hadn’t been properly conveyed. The importance of it had been diluted because of the circumstances of its delivery.

Almost immediately, I was proved right, because as soon as we got back to the hotel I had players moaning to me about not being permitted to go into central London, saying that they were grown men and should be given their freedom.

The moment Mike had finished speaking, I knew that this would happen. What frustrated me most was that every player with a grievance was coming to me to ask why they weren’t permitted out, and I sensed a real readiness in the ranks to simply ignore the coach’s call.

The fact was that discipline was crumbling because it had been permitted to crumble. Two years earlier, if Steve Hansen had made the call that we weren’t to go out, it would have been accepted without a single murmur.

And, whatever we ended up doing, it would have been done together. Mike’s authority was being challenged, leaving me to wonder whether he had properly exerted it in the first place.

The fact that the squad was falling out of line was evident that night as we began to split into little factions.

However, there was one common thread: nobody was happy as the bus left the stadium. I then found myself in the position of having to tell the team not to do something that I myself wanted to do.

Sometimes, players find it impossible to see the bigger picture after games for the simple reason that we are the ones who have actually played. Finding a release mechanism after the pressure of a Test-match week can take over, and the next game can seem as though it might as well be six months away.

That evening, we needed someone who hadn’t played to see the bigger picture and make us see it as well. Mike had said his piece in his own way, but the message hadn’t hit home.

Little did we know it, but Mike was heading towards his final game in charge. However, the way he behaved didn’t offer an inkling of what was to come.

In the press conference after we had beaten Scotland 26–18 the following Sunday, I can remember saying that we should be in good fettle to face Ireland because we had the ex-Leinster coach in charge of us.

The meeting that kept the whole of Wales talking for months after Mike’s departure had happened earlier that week.

If you believe the conspiracy theorists, I had called summit talks with WRU chief executive Steve Lewis to demand Mike’s sacking in an act of treachery. Sadly for the would-be Hollywood scriptwriters, it was nothing like that.

Yes, there was a meeting between senior players and Steve Lewis. Stephen Jones, Martyn Williams, Brent Cockbain and I met him, just as a delegation of us had intermittently done since he had taken the job.

The main purpose of the meeting was to clarify an insurance issue, which had become a concern after Gareth Cooper had gone off at Twickenham with a damaged shoulder.

The aim was to discover exactly what the extent of our cover from the WRU was and what we were entitled to in the event of certain scenarios. I made it clear to Steve that unless we were fully covered for the worst injuries imaginable on a rugby field, then we would consider withdrawing our services.

When I revealed this on the Scrum V programme, I was leapt upon by Eddie Butler, who claimed that being prepared to go on strike was further evidence of player power.

I countered by pointing out that rugby players are no different from anyone else in the world of work – if we were not adequately insured, there was no way we could be expected to fulfil our duties.

Our fears were allayed by what Steve told us, so the matter never went any further. A few more run-of-the-mill issues were discussed, and then I moved on to the subject of Mike Ruddock.

I told Steve about my concerns that Mike wasn’t taking enough responsibility in the running of the team, considering that he was head coach.

Immediately, Steve tried to cut me off, but I had enough time to get a little further, saying that we wanted Mike to be the one to take us forward.

That wasn’t happening at present, though, I continued. Steve told us that if we had any issues, they would have to be between us and Mike, and that, as far as the union was concerned, the coach would retain their full backing.

"Fair enough," I thought. But what he didn’t seem to realise was that I had already imparted these exact concerns to Mike. I only brought it up with Steve because I thought someone else might have more luck than I was having in trying to trigger a bit of change.

But I was wasting my time with him on that particular subject. The meeting was called to a rather hasty end – and that was that.

But it wasn’t. On the Tuesday after the Scotland game, I received a phone call in Toulouse from Alan Phillips. "Mike’s leaving," he said.

"What d’you mean? Why?" I asked.

It was a fairly brief call, and for 24 hours or so, the only thing I knew about the matter was what I saw on the Welsh news, which I used to get via satellite, and what people back in Wales were telling me over the phone.

But it was conjecture and opinion, speculation and tittle-tattle. That said, the matter was clearly dominating the news agenda. I don’t think it would have been knocked off the front pages had a volcano erupted underneath the Millennium Stadium.

The next day, the players were beginning to be accused of knifing Mike in the back – me more than anybody.

One of the most pathetic theories was that we were jealous of Mike for having been awarded an OBE in the New Year’s honours list. I actually found that a rare source of amusement – you could either laugh or cry at the sheer depth of some people’s ignorance.

The only thing I can say is that anyone who knows me will confirm that receiving something like an OBE is the sort of thing I will never care two hoots about.

For the record, the players have never had a problem with Mike’s award and appreciated the fact that he immediately said that he was accepting it on behalf of everyone who had been involved in the Grand Slam effort.

Anyway, in the madcap aftermath of his departure, I sent him a text the day after his exit was formally announced. It read, "Whatever you believe and whatever you think, I believe you should have had the courtesy to tell us to our faces that you were going."

Mike texted me back and asked me to call him. I did. He assured me that he had left because of a breakdown in negotiations with the WRU over the renewal of his contract.

He said the whole business had reached a stalemate and that this was the reason he had decided enough was enough.

I asked him to tell me if our meeting with Steve Lewis had been the reason. He simply replied that as players we would get his full support for the rest of the Six Nations.

The next time I spoke to Mike was the day before I was due to go on Scrum V. I then asked him to do me a favour. I told him that I was due to go on the programme and asked him to put it in writing that so-called player power was not the reason he had left the job in order to clear up any confusion and to put an end to the players being solely blamed for his leaving.

Mike said that he didn’t have a problem doing so, but then five minutes after he phoned me back to say that his solicitor wouldn’t permit him to do it.

I realised that if it had reached the point at which solicitors were stepping in, I might as well just let it go.

Furthermore, I knew that if this whole episode was becoming a legal matter, I would be way out of my depth.

Unfortunately, I fear that if I do a million good things in my career, the one bad thing that I have been accused of will always stand out. There is little I can do about that.

The only thing I can say is that I have only tried to be honest with people. In detailing the most turbulent period of my career, I have tried to be objective and avoid any undue criticism of individuals.

I have simply called things as I saw them. I wish Mike Ruddock nothing but the very best in whatever he does in the future. I will always remember him as the guy who had the confidence to make me captain of Wales.

What should have been the best day of my career (Wales v Ireland 2005) turned out not to be. Instead, I struggled dreadfully with my emotions, and you could say that it was the best and the worst day of my rugby career rolled into one.

I remained with the team, and I remember going downstairs at the hotel on the morning of the game and suddenly beginning to notice things that just pass you by when you are playing.

For example, I was struck by the number of fans who had gathered at the hotel. When you know you have a game, you find you want to avoid getting caught up with them because you are trying to focus and don’t want to let the atmosphere have any negative effect on you.

But this time I was very conscious of the hubbub that surrounded us. As soon as I had opened my eyes in my hotel bedroom that morning, I turned on the television, and the match was there. I turned on the radio, and the match was there. Everyone, it seemed, was talking about the game and how the team had a chance to do something that no Wales side had done for 27 years.

There would never be a day like it, they were claiming. Then it came crashing down upon me that this was the day I had waited for my whole career, and I was not going to be a part of it.

Oh, I was there OK. I was with the lads, and I’d be with them on the team bus, at the ground and in the dressing room – but I wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing.

I would not be lacing up my boots. I would not be noting the No 15 jersey sliding down my back.

I would not be gathering the team together in a huddle before we left for the tunnel. I would not be leading them out onto the field as 74,500 fans went delirious.

I would not be standing tall at the top of our team line for the anthem. I would not be playing.

I never thought that I would get the chance to win the Grand Slam for Wales in front of our own fans, but that chance should have been there for me that day.

It wasn’t, and the realisation was ruining me. I subsequently spent the day being false.

I was very conscious that I could not in any way permit my personal anguish to be picked up on by the rest of the players. I might have been missing out, but my team-mates had every right to savour the experience and did not deserve to have my mood dragging them down.

So I put on the most convincing front I could, trying to smile and be myself as much as possible, even though I wanted to curl up in a ball and die.

Fortunately, I must have done a pretty good job, because not once did any of the players come up and sense the need to commiserate with me.

In any case, the times when I was around them were the easiest because I could get involved with the banter and the conversation. Then, for a few precious moments, I would forget that I wasn’t playing and that I had a hand in plaster.

I got through it somehow, but my mood affected everything I did, from the moment I woke up to when my head hit the pillow that night.

I did receive the trophy with Michael Owen on the pitch at the end of the game, but that was not how I had wanted it.

Instead, from the moment my hand had gone into plaster after the France game, I had hatched a plan for what I wanted to happen if it came down to us winning the Grand Slam and there was to be a trophy presented to us in front of the crowd.

I viewed that moment as the ultimate opportunity for us to show the rest of the world what we were about – that we were first and foremost a team, not a collection of individuals.

The way to do that, I was convinced, was to get someone who had turned up to squad training every Monday and had then been sent back to their region on the Wednesday having been told they were not selected for the forthcoming match to go up and collect the trophy on our behalf.

And the man to do it in my eyes was the Newport Gwent Dragons hooker Steve "Jabba" Jones. He was a guy who had been in exactly that position, and I was of the opinion that this was our chance to show everyone that somebody like him was as important to us as anyone else in the squad.

I know this will sound ridiculous to a lot of people and some would have considered it silly. But it was what I wanted, and it was important to me.

However, when I told Martyn Williams, he shook his head. "Alf, you’ve deserved this," he said. "You have earned the right to go up there and receive that trophy, so get yourself up there."

I didn’t even speak to Steve Jones about my idea, but I think that if I had played and been in my kit, I would have insisted that he get up there and receive the trophy.

Without a doubt, I would have foregone the pleasure of lifting the trophy as captain in order to send a message to the world about what we stood for.

In the end, my plan never materialised. I’m not sure how many of the others wanted it done like that, and, because I had not been captain that day, I didn’t think I could force the issue.

These guys had just sweated blood for 80 minutes, and the last thing I thought they would have wanted was someone who hadn’t played coming onto the pitch and laying down the law.

And so me and Michael Owen went up and lifted the pot between us, with some woman from the BBC trying to interview the two of us as we all went nuts with champagne flying.